hero (n)
by hollyhobbit101
Summary: Jacob Kowalski is many things, but a hero is not one of them.


**For the Houses Competition. Translation for the Polish: _babcia _****= grandma; ****mój syn = my son**

**House: Ravenclaw**

**Subject: Charms**

**Category: Standard**

**Prompt: Jacob Kowalski**

**Word count: 1163**

* * *

Jacob Kowalski is no hero. He'd served during the war, of course he had, but so had half of the entire world. He isn't special. He isn't a hero.

He's sure the newspapers would disagree; that word - _hero _\- is a near constant feature in all the headlines. _OUR RETURNING HEROES_, they announce, or, _THE HEROES WHO WON THE WAR_. Even President Wilson celebrates them, these scarred, bruised men they call heroes.

Jacob hates it.

Oh, he's sure that many of his comrades can lay claim to that title, that plenty of them performed acts of true, ancient heroism. But Jacob is not one of them, and he will not hear himself grouped among them. He did not do any great deeds, or anything that will make it into the history books of the future. He did his duty, no more than that, and no less.

Besides, the papers have got it all wrong. The real heroes are not the ones who returned. Jacob fought, and he killed, and he did everything any old soldier was supposed to do. But he did not die.

Once, a long time ago, and not so long at all, Jacob had a brother. Samuel, his name was, and he was the hero Jacob can never be.

Samuel was two years older than Jacob and far taller, so he loved to mock Jacob about his height, or ruffle his hair and call him '_little brother' _in their native Polish. They fought, as all siblings do, and Jacob pretended to hate him for his constant brags and boasts about being the good-looking one of the two. But, in the end, he had loved his brother, even though he never actually told him.

(Jacob regrets that, now. He's sure Samuel knew, but he wishes he had told him, all the same.)

People who met them would often call the two of them chalk and cheese. Samuel was tall, handsome, athletic, popular - everything Jacob was not. Whereas his brother would spend hours away from home with his friends, Jacob preferred being in the kitchen, learning to cook with his _babcia_. Even after they moved to America, and left their grandparents behind, nothing changed. Samuel was always so easy like that, able to make friends wherever he went. People like Jacob well enough, he reflects, but they seemed to gravitate towards his brother, even if all Samuel had done was flash a smile, or tipped his hat.

Even so, Jacob could never bring himself to be jealous of his brother. Indeed, he understood Samuel's appeal - he'd been looking up to his older brother from the moment he was born. He loved him, and, besides, he never wanted any of what Samuel had. Jacob was happy, and that was enough for him.

Jacob was 14 when the war broke out. He'd been scared at first, but Samuel had reassured him.

"Wilson's said we're staying neutral, _idiota_. That means they can't hurt us," he'd promised. Jacob had believed him, because Samuel was 16, practically a grown-up, and he had to know.

But, three years later, they were at war. Jacob was still a few months short of his 18th birthday, so he couldn't sign up, but Samuel was 19. He came home one day wearing his new uniform, handsome and proud, and their mother had cried. At the time, Jacob had thought it was because of how wonderful Samuel looked, but he knows better now. She was grieving.

Jacob enlisted as soon as he could, and his mother cried again when she saw him.

"Not you too, _mój syn_," she begged. "Please."

"It's okay, Mom," he insisted, placing his hands on her shoulders. "I'm gonna join Samuel. We'll be heroes, you'll see."

She'd only cried harder at that, her head resting on his chest as her little body shook. Jacob hadn't known what to make of it - of course, he knew that war was dangerous, and he'd be lying if he said he wasn't scared, but this was his chance. Besides, they all said that the war would be over soon. Before 1918 was out, they said. 'Course, they'd been saying the war would be over soon for years now, but it felt different this time. It felt hopeful.

So Jacob marched to war, joining the American Expeditionary Force, just like his brother. He spent some weeks training, but it wasn't long before he was shipped out to France; the Front needed men too much to waste them in a training camp. He looked for Samuel everywhere, but he never saw him.

(He would never see his brother again, but Jacob didn't know that back then.)

He hadn't been at war for long before he understood why his mother cried when she saw them both in their uniforms. There was no glory to war, no pride or happiness. There was just mud, blood, death, and pain. They weren't heroes, Jacob realised when he saw his best friend gunned down next to him. Tommy's eyes stared empty into the cloud-covered sky, and his uniform was stained where the bullets had hit. He did not look like the bronze-skinned, muscled heroes of myth - he looked like a boy.

In that moment, Jacob knew that he would never be a hero. He wasn't brave, nor was he strong, or noble. He followed orders, and he would fight until the war was over, or until he ended up like Tommy, but he would not be a hero. Titles such as those did not belong to people like him.

In September, there was a battle at Saint-Mihiel. The first major American offensive of the war, they said, a fact which the generals seemed very proud of. Jacob's division was there, and so, Jacob found out later, was Samuel's. They won a resounding victory, and followed it up with an equally successful campaign that sounded the death knell for the German army. It was a moment of great pride for the Expeditionary Forces - they who had been an untrained, undisciplined rabble had learned how to kill with the rest of them.

The war ended on November 11th, 1918, two months after the first battle. It was only then that Jacob found out Samuel had died, killed in action at Saint-Mihiel. He felt numb at the news, and then angry. Why should he be called a hero, when others so much more deserving of that title go forgotten, just another name added to the roster of those who never made it?

He wasn't a hero. He was just lucky.

Jacob stays in France, even now, two years later, kept there along with the rest of his unit as part of a peace-making measure. He wants to go home, to fulfil his dream of opening a bakery in honour of his _babcia_. But he can't. He has to stay here, and remember, and finish the work that all the true heroes died for so long ago, and yet no so long at all.


End file.
